kissed the girls and made them pie
by delectorskayas
Summary: Pushing Daisies AU. Alison Hendrix is a stress baker and pie shop owner who accidentally brings her childhood BFF/crush back from the dead. She also has an undead cat, two delightful but dangerous partners in crime, and a troupe of Soccer Moms TM to deal with. Everything's going to be fine.


At this very moment, Alison Hendrix is exactly twenty-nine years, three months, four days, seventeen hours and two minutes old. It's 11.32am, the main oven at 'Slice of Heaven' is heated to 180C, and, a few streets away, the universe is conspiring to kill someone, as it has a habit of doing.

But Alison, crimping the edge of a rhubarb pie, is blissfully unaware of this.

Satisfied, she slides the last pie into the oven just as the kitchen's back door opens. A delivery boy staggers in, carrying a stack of boxes.

"Morning, Ms. Hendrix."

"Ah, hello, Ramon." Alison wipes her hands on the front of her apron. "Is this everything?"

"All present and correct, Ms. Hendrix, if you'd just like to check…"

He nudges open the lid of one of the boxes, looking squeamish. Strawberries are packed in, squashy and furry and definitely rotten.

"Excellent, thank you."

Ramon nods politely and dives out the door, glad to dump the boxes with their mouldy cargo. She's an odd one, that Ms. Hendrix, and surely nobody needs to make that much compost.

Alison lines the boxes up on the counter, then hesitates, scanning the menu. Strawberry pie first, she decides, and selects an especially grungy specimen from the first box, picking it up carefully between her finger and thumb. The fruit almost seems to glow, colour and juice flooding into it, the mould fading to nothing. What had barely been fit for flies an instant ago is now edible and, frankly, delicious.

Nice, sweet, headband-wearing pie restaurant owner Alison Hendrix has a number of secrets, mainly regarding her closely-guarded cherry conserve recipe. But her talents in waking the dead are on a whole other level.

* * *

When Alison was eight, her cat had been attacked by a fox, and she had found him doing a convincing impression of an incredibly dead cat in the garden.

Maybe it had just been childish curiosity – perhaps now she'd finally be able to touch the cat's nose without getting scratched - overcoming her grief for dear departed Bobby. She had taken it in her stride when the cat had unstiffened with a blue glow and a short electric buzz. He had scuffled away from her hand and streaked away to hide under a rosebush, presumably to nurse his already-healing wounds and ponder the fleeting nature of life and existence.

(Bobby had lived on to go with Alison to college, hiding from suspicious landlords in cupboards, and then to the small apartment above 'Slice of Heaven'. Generally he opted to live in the luxury pet penthouse also known as Felix's bed. One of them was less happy with the arrangement.)

But, as everybody knows, all fairytale gifts must come with a caveat or two.

A dead thing can only be brought back to life with no consequences for sixty seconds. After that, balance needs to be restored to the universe, and something else must die to take its place.

(The neighbour's dog had died on the same day as the feline resuscitation. Alison hadn't thought much of it at the time.)

And, of course, there was a sting in the tail. If Alison were to touch a re-animated dead thing for a second time, they're dead again - for good.

(Bobby had never been the cuddliest of cats; there were no problems there.)

(That didn't mean that it had never caused complications.)

* * *

Felix bounces in, his face falling when he registers the lack of Ramon in the room.

"Did you scare him off already?"

"Poor Ramon's very busy, Felix. He has enough to do without you flirting with him as well," Alison scolds, trying to wave him back into the restaurant.

"It's my natural charm, darling, and there's nothing to do at the till. I need to hide from Aynsley and the other yummy mummies." Felix rolls his eyes. "God, you know what they're like - 'ooh, no cream, thank you, I'm behaving badly enough already, tee hee!' It's excruciating."

Alison glances over his shoulder into the restaurant. It's too early for the lunch crowd, so there are plenty of empty tables. There's Cosima Niehaus, scrunched into the corner of a booth, surrounded by textbooks and wolfing down banoffee pie. An old guy is drinking coffee at the counter, apparently not a fan of any of the twenty-one options on the menu that day. A couple of moms are sat here and there with their children, and that's the lot for the next couple of hours, maybe she'll have time to make double pastry and freeze half, although she should check the -

"Ew, that's disgusting!" Felix grimaces at the box of grey fruit. "Oh, you're not doing your zombie fruit now -"

"Don't call it that, Felix," Alison says primly, picking up six berries in one hand. "It's organic."

"It's weird, that's what it is," he teases, grabbing a fresh strawberry from the bowl, "you zapping new life everywhere with your Frankenstein hands. I can't say I ever paid attention in science, but that's definitely freaky."

Alison swats at him. "Get back in the restaurant and start collecting plates before I fire you and make you get your own flat for you and your paraphernalia, so help me God."

Then there's a noise outside that could be a car backfiring.

And so it happens that, less than ten metres up the road from 'Slice of Heaven', the five-foot-two teenage mugger who thinks he's a hardass fires two bullets straight at Detective Elizabeth Childs.

Before anyone inside the restaurant has even thought to turn their head towards the noise outside, the policewoman has sprawled backwards. Her head hits the pavement with a horrible crack, but it's not as though she notices.

She's quite, quite dead.

* * *

This is a nice neighbourhood. People drive their four by fours to their pilates classes and their non-denominational church services. People do not get shot on pavements outside baked goods establishments. It stands to reason that everyone wants to get the most excitement they can from the occasion.

Cosima is engrossed in a worrying-sounding conversation with Chief Soccer Mom about bullet velocity. The other moms are either huddled with their kids at the back of the restaurant, convinced that the front windows are about to implode, or have dived out the door to find out who got shot, who did the shooting, and whether it was a kid without a nuclear family role model or a gang of gun-toting criminals.

Only Alison hasn't moved in the last ten minutes, humming show tunes under her breath and reanimating strawberries. It's only when Felix re-enters the kitchen that she looks up.

"Someone's dead, Alison. Super dead with coffin flies on top." He stares meaningfully at her. Alison stares meaningfully at a strawberry pitter. "I thought this was meant to be your time to shine."

"I don't think it's appropriate right now, Felix."

"It'll be easier now than trying to get into the morgue later. Colin owes me, but even he has a limit, and the body's literally right there on the pavement. You can do your -" he does a vague jazzhands gesture "- thing, the ambulance arrives and nobody's any the wiser."

There's a pause, then Alison closes the lid on the last box of strawberries with a snap.

"This is the last time," she says firmly, dabbing her hands with a tea towel.

Felix just smiles.

(She always says that.)

* * *

"All right, Raj?" Felix says lightly to the man standing next to the ominous white police tent on the pavement. Alison doesn't bother asking how he knows his name. "What happened?"

"Policewoman got shot," Raj answers shortly. "It was some teenager, he got away. She was my colleague, she was good, she was…nice." He glances down, looking miserable.

Felix gives that blinding customer-service, wholesome-Canadian-charm smile that he always sends at Alison right before he and Sarah do something questionable.

"What was her name?"

"Beth – Elizabeth. Childs."

Beth. Crash. Beth Childs. Crashcrashcrash.

From where she's standing next to Felix, Alison takes a step backwards, places a hand against the wall to steady herself

"Oh my God."

Felix's eyes dart between her and Raj. "What?"

What? Her best-friend childhood-neighbour role-model first-baby-gay-crush who she hasn't seen in twenty years is in this city and is also dead. Where to start?

"I think I knew her," she says quietly instead, "when I was little. We were neighbours, and –" and she was my first neighbour, first friend…first kiss.

Instead she stops, pushes her shoulders back, gives Felix a brief smile. Felix grimaces sympathetically back at her, then turns to the sick-looking policeman.

"Listen, Raj, why don't you come in and sit down? The paramedics are getting here any minute, and Alison can wait for them. You look like you could use some coffee. On the house, of course."

Raj hesitates, but Felix's hand is already on his arm, guiding him into the restaurant. And Alison steps behind the police tent like it's nothing.

(She's no stranger to waking the dead - Sarah had threatened to get her a trophy when she hit a hundred, and that had been a while ago - but this feels different somehow.)

Her hair's straighter, Alison thinks stupidly. She'd still have recognised her.

Automatically, she checks her watch, waits for the second hand to tick round to the twelve. Then she touches the back of Beth's hand. Just for a moment.

Beth snaps upright.

"Where's the kid?"

Alison stares stupidly for a second. "Who?"

"The one who shot me, genius! Where's Art? Are the other cops even here yet? Are you a paramedic?" She stares. "Wait, holy crap, I recognise you - you used to live across the street from me. It's…Alison, right?" Some of the surety's gone out of her voice.

Alison can feel herself smiling. "You remembered my name?

"Course." Beth beams at her, and Alison feels her heart rate warp to twice its normal speed. For Heaven's sake, pull yourself together.

She drags herself back into business mode. "I'm very sorry, there's not much time. Can you tell me what happened?"

"Sure, I was - I'd been on a call-out, I was going back to the station and I saw some idiot grabbing a woman's purse. I'd just got out of the car and called to him to stop when – boom. And now my head's killing me."

"Did you see his face, the mugger's?"

"No, I didn't get a look before I went down. And what's with the interview already? Are you checking for brain damage or what?"

Alison smiles weakly. Thirty-five seconds down. No time, no time, no time, her brain's chanting.

Unless…

Slowly, deliberately Alison sits back on her heels, then climbs to her feet.

"You need to come with me," she says, her mouth tripping over the words. "I know it sounds weird, and I promise I'll explain everything just as soon as I can, but right now we have to go, we have to leave, please trust me -"

Maybe she's just too concussed to be debating anything right now, but Beth gets up.

"Where are we going?"

She stretches out to grab Alison's hand, and Alison flinches back.

"You can't - no - I'll explain later, just come on -"

And it's so easy. They walk out from behind the police tent, past the side of 'Slice of Heaven' and down the alley where the bins are kept, heading for the back stairs up to the apartment. There's the sound of a siren a few streets away, and, oh Lord, Alison should not be giggling, there is a time and a place for giggling, and it's certainly not here.

(At this point, the invisible stopwatch hanging over Beth Childs hits sixty seconds.)

Abruptly there's shouting from the restaurant, both inside -

"Sir? Sir, can you hear me?"

"Christ, I think he's –"

"He's had a heart attack!"

"Does anyone know CPR?"

- and outside -

"What do you mean, gone?"

"This makes no sense, what -"

"Is this somebody's idea of a joke?"

"Where's Raj?"

And there on the back stairs, Detective Elizabeth Childs turns twenty-eight years, eleven months, twelve hours and fifty minutes old.


End file.
